Poe must die

THIRTY-SIX

“Yer here to bite the ken.” Wade Bruenhausen started his rocking chair in motion again, slowly rubbing greasy hands on his shirt front. The Dutch procurer was fat, with a nose as long and as pointed as a carrot and he smelled of shit. Figg, who found it easy to dislike him, turned his face away from the man’s body odor.

“Ain’t what we’s ‘ere for,” said Figg looking around the dirty cellar where Bruenhausen lived with his child whores. There was nothing in this house they wanted to rob.

“I says you are.” Bruenhausen rocked faster, moving in and out of the orange glow from the fireplace diagonally behind him.

“You can bloody well say what you like. We told you what we want. We want Dearborn Lapham.”

Bruenhausen stopped rocking. “Do you now? The gentlemen want little Dearborn. Lots of gentlemen want little Dearborn. What makes you two so special, besides the fact that I do not much like either one of you by the sound of your voices?”

“We wants ’er. We will pay for ’er time.” Figg looked at Poe standing several feet behind him. It was Poe’s idea. Don’t waste time searching for Hugh Larney. The hours were too few and too precious for that. Make him come to us. Dearborn Lapham. When Larney learned that Poe and Figg had her …

It will be too much for his vanity, Poe had said. Pray that it is, replied Figg. Poe was worried about Rachel, about her nightmares and her need for a doctor. He feared that as long as Jonathan existed, Rachel would live in terror. The spiritualist’s continued existence would damage hers. So find Jonathan before the nine days were up and destroy him.

Figg no longer had a woman to worry about, nor did he have nine days to find Jonathan. The second day was ending and that left one more week. Figg himself had barely been in New York a week. Seven days more and Jonathan would be beyond his revenge. Beyond anyone’s revenge.

Make Hugh Larney come to them. Then force him to reveal Jonathan’s whereabouts. So it was down to the Bowery and Wade Bruenhausen, who “read” his bible to his child whores and thieves by quoting long passages he’d memorized. The gross and smelly Bruenhausen, with most of his black hair gone because of an earlier attack of yellow fever, was surly, suspicious. He wore a frilly shirt, knee britches, silk stockings and high heels, the dated clothing of another century. All of the clothing was filthy, as though Bruenhausen had rolled around in coal dust.

He reminded Figg of a huge, vile toad.

Bruenhausen coughed up phlegm from his throat, spitting it on the floor just inches from Figg’s boots. His voice was an ugly whisper, the result of a severed vocal cord presented to him some years ago by a broken bottle in the hands of a drunken acquaintance.

“Mr. Poe ain’t sayin’ much. Then again he has been known to say too much. I still remember you telling that church committee that I should be hanged for what I was doing with little children.”

“Hanged, drawn and quartered, I believe I said.”

“Oh you did, that you did. I remember. Some folks took your words to heart, Mr. Poe, and I was forced to absent myself from New York for a brief turn. Might I inquire as to why you want the services of Dearborn Lapham, considerin’ how you condemned my, er, business practices some time back?”

Poe stepped forward. “She is the key to a mystery we seek to unravel.”

“Is she now?”

Bruenhausen leered and resumed rocking, lifting his dirty, white high heel shoes off the floor each time he rocked backwards. Poe was a hypocritical bastard. Criticizing Bruenhausen and now showing up with heat in his loins for the tender flesh of a child. Hypocritical bastard.

The Dutchman said, “You cannot have her. She is reserved for a special customer and he pays me well, more than you two can afford.”

Figg said, “I have cash money. We know you sends ‘er to Hugh Larney, but all the same we would like to ’ave ’er for a time. No ‘arm will come to the child. We will pay you a good price.”

The man disgusted Figg, who would have preferred to hold the Dutchman’s bare backside to the flames.

The rocking stopped once more. “It is heartwarming, Mr. Poe, to have you come to me after all these years. You are here to take-”

''To pay.” Figg was losing patience.

“No!” A smug Bruenhausen resumed rocking.

Figg looked around the dark cellar. “Is she about?” Straw in corners for the children to sleep on. Cardboard boxes, empty barrels, empty whiskey bottles. A junk factory smelling like a privy and Figg didn’t want to spend any more time here than he had to. Near the front door, three dirty kids with long curly hair, their thin bodies covered by rags, stood watching the three men. Figg couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls under the grime, but he knew one thing for sure-they would not live long working for Wade Bruenhausen.

“Is she about, says the Englishman.” Bruenhausen stopped rocking. “I would say that you are not a young man, that you are large and you are a plain man, lower station and you have little patience with matters which do not go your way.” The rocking resumed.

“The girl,” growled Figg.

Bruenhausen responded to the threat in the boxer’s voice. He whistled sharply between his teeth-three shrill tweets. Instantly, the children ran from the cellar, leaving the three men alone.

As Poe and Figg turned to look at the empty doorway, Bruenhausen leaned to his left as though listening to the flames in the fireplace.

“Saint Luke, chapter four, verse ten. ‘For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.’”

Figg and Poe were staring at him, when they heard the noise behind them. Turning, they saw the dark cellar quickly fill with children. In seconds, fifteen of them crammed into the room and most-boys and girls-held weapons. Knives, clubs, broken bottles. One who didn’t was Dearborn Lapham, who stood uncomfortably in the first line of children.

Bruenhausen’s rocking was slow and deliberate. Menacing. “My rod and my staff, Englishman.” Bruenhausen reached for his own neck with a hairy hand.

“Look at them,” he said. “Abandoned urchins who know no loyalty save that which I have placed in their hearts and minds. No one dares challenge me so long as the little ones are around. Some are as young as five, none over fifteen and I own them, Englishman. Own them body and soul and it is for fear and love of me that they will deal with you. You will not be the first to feel their wrath. When I clap my hands together-”

He stopped rocking, hands poised in front of his chest and only inches apart. “Twice. That is the signal. And afterwards, we shall see if you are carrying anything of value. Dearborn?”

“Yes, Mr. Bruenhausen?”

“You shall watch your friends be chastised.”

“Yes, Mr. Bruenhausen.” Dearborn always did as she was told.

The Dutchman adjusted the tiny black spectacles which hid his sightless eyes. “I owe you, Mr. Edgar Allan meddlin’ Poe, and a debt should always be paid. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and so it is written. As for your English friend, I do not enjoy his manners.”

The Dutchman’s smile was cruel as he lifted hands from his lap and his hands were again in front of his chest and inches apart when Figg pulled the trigger on the flintlock, firing through his coat pocket, briefly setting fire to the cloth and sending a ball through both of the Dutchman’s hands.

Bruenhausen screamed, jerking backwards in the rocking chair, sending it over and down to the floor. Now he was in the straw and dirt, arms crossed in front of his chest, blood pouring down the back and front of both hands.

“JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus, oh dear JesusJesusJesus!” His tiny black spectacles dangled from one ear as he twitched with pain.

The advantage was Figg’s and he used it.

Spinning quickly around to face the children, Figg removed the other flintlock from his pocket. His coat still smoked from the first shot. “Only one ball. Well, ’oo wants it? Come on you murderin’ little buggers, ’oo wants to die!”

The boxer’s bulldog face was terrifying. Poe had never seen him look this frightening and it was easy to imagine the forces that had gone to create a Pierce James Figg over the years. There was a fierceness in the man that belonged to a trapped animal determined to kill or be killed. The boxer appeared to have accepted death and therefore no longer feared it.

His bold action had snatched away any initiative the children might have had. And Wade Bruenhausen lay in agony on the floor, unable to command or threaten.

Figg said, “You, Dearborn. Step over ‘ere and mind you do it carefully. Killin’s a man’s job and if anyone of you wants to try me, I will prove to you that this is so. I will kill one of you immediately and after that I will use a knife and me fists on the rest. More than one of you will die before I will and that is a fact.”

The children hesitated. Dearborn stepped over to Poe who put an arm around her, his eyes darting from Figg to the children and back again. Violence hung around the boxer like mist around a high mountain peak. Poe held his breath. The children were capable of anything; children like these had killed before.

But they had never seen Pierce James Figg before.

He said, “Get the bleedin’ ’ell outta here, all of you. Go on, hop it!”

He took a step forward and they turned and ran.

Bruenhausen lay in front of the fireplace, trembling with the incredible pain and continually repeating the name of Jesus.

Figg walked over to him. “Do not come for the child, Dutchman. If you do, I will ‘ave your life. You got me word on that. It is Pierce James Figg who tells you he will do for you if you seek the lass.”

Bruenhausen spoke through clenched teeth. “Jesus will strike you down. Jesus will come for you.”

“Best you not be with ‘im when he shows.”

Figg lifted his foot to stomp Bruenhausen and that’s when Poe shouted, “Mr. Figg!”

Figg gently put his foot down to the floor, eyes on a frightened Bruenhausen.

The boxer dropped a gold sovereign on the procurer’s bloody shirt front. “Use it fer a gravestone, for if I see you again, that is what you’ll be needin’.”